Introduction Have you ever wondered just how big our solar system really is? Well, let's take a trip to the outskirts, where a tiny, icy world named Sedna orbits around our Sun. But hold on tight, because it's a long journey! When Sedna is the farthest away from the Sun, a point known as its "aphelion", it's so far away that it takes light over a day to travel from the Sun to Sedna. Now that's a distance!

Sedna's Distance from the Sun Sedna is one of the most distant known objects in our solar system. Its distance from the Sun when it's the farthest away is about 936 astronomical units (AU). One AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. So, if you multiply 93 million miles by 936, you'll get the distance from the Sun to Sedna at its aphelion. That's an incredibly long distance!

Size Comparison Now that's a big number, but what does it really mean? Let's compare it to some distances we're familiar with:

• Sedna is over 25 times farther from the Sun than Neptune, the farthest planet in our solar system. - The distance from the Sun to Sedna is over 10 times longer than the entire width of our solar system as defined by the orbit of Neptune. - It's such a long distance that if you could drive a car at 60 miles per hour straight up into space, it would take you over 1,700 years to reach Sedna!

Sedna's Fascinating Journey Sedna takes more than 10,000 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun. That's because it moves very slowly due to its great distance from the Sun. To give you an idea, the last time Sedna was at its closest point to the Sun, the Earth was just coming out of the last Ice Age!

In Conclusion Sedna gives us a glimpse of just how vast our solar system is. Even at the speed of light, it takes over a day for light to reach Sedna when it's at its aphelion. This tiny, icy world at the edge of our solar system helps us understand that space is not just about stars and planets, but also about the incredible distances between them. So, next time you look up at the night sky, remember Sedna, the small world that's almost a light-day away.